


Bonding & Braids

by defyinggravitee



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Braids, Cecil and Janice are just really cute okay, Family, Fluff, Gen, Uncle-Niece Relationship, Weddings, i love their relationship a lot, world's best flower girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 10:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9067732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defyinggravitee/pseuds/defyinggravitee
Summary: Janice loves it when Cecil braids her hair.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've always been fond of the headcanon that Cecil has hair long enough to braid and that he teaches Janice how. I decided to treat myself to writing some post-holiday fluff.

Cecil has always enjoyed braiding his hair. He could pull it into a ponytail, of course, or a messy bun, or occasionally pigtails, which Carlos finds especially adorable. All of these styles are easier to execute than braids, but the braids look so much nicer, and he enjoys the daily routine of plaiting his hair in the morning, of wrapping strands over and under one another in pretty patterns before tying them off with brightly colored elastic.

When Janice is a toddler, he braids her hair for her while they watch cartoons, adorable twin French braids with colorful ribbons at the ends, and the look delights her. "Make me pretty, Uncle Cecil!" she starts demanding when he visits, and he laughs and does as she wishes. Abby has never been one for elaborate hairstyles, preferring to keep hers in a low maintenance, chin-length bob, and when Steve comes along he is, of course, completely useless with hair. So Cecil is the only person who can do it for her, and it becomes a sort of ritual for them, a bond that only the two of them share.

When Janice gets older, Cecil teaches her to braid her own hair. He is patient with her, helping guide her fingers when she needs it and giving her space to practice on her own when she needs that, too. At seven she can do both single and double braids on herself, and by nine she's French braiding with confidence. 

Still, they both enjoy when Cecil does it for her, and she always asks his help for important occasions like school picture day and the annual Night Vale Elementary Howling Festival. It's the first thing they do when she sleeps over at Cecil's, before pizza and movies and board games. She lets Carlos do it once, after he moves in, and Carlos treats her hair with a kind of reverence, knowing how important this ritual is to both his boyfriend and to Janice. When he finishes, she studies her reflection in the television screen, and nods approvingly, and from then on she accepts Carlos as her uncle, even before he legally becomes so.

When Janice enters middle school, she and Cecil learn together how to create more elaborate styles, starting with two parallel braids on the side of the head, ending an elegant chignon. They wear it together the day after they master it, Cecil in the booth at the station and Janice at her desk at school, separated in space but connected in appearance. Next they try a waterfall, which is tricky, until they figure out they're missing a key syllable in the chant needed to align it properly. The fishtail is the most difficult of all, but neither of them is a quitter, and they master it out of spite as much as desire achieve the look.

Once, they try braiding their hair together, inspired by a post on Cecil's Pinterest page, and they giggle the whole time, the experiment ending in a mess of hair that, while not aesthetically pleasing at all, is definitely intertwined.

"What would you do if I dropped a spider on you right now?" Carlos teases.

"Don't you dare," Cecil and Janice say together.

On Cecil's wedding day, they swap roles, and Janice braids his hair for the first time. He sits perfectly still, in spite of his pre-wedding jitters, as she carefully twines beautiful purple blossoms into his plaits. Despite the simplicity of the braid, Cecil thinks it is the most exquisite his hair has ever looked, and he tells her so. 

"You have to look pretty on your wedding day," Janice tells him matter-of-factly. "Besides, I owe you for a whole bunch of years of braiding. Thanks, Uncle Cecil." She kisses him on the cheek, then tucks the rest of the flowers into a homemade basket she'd built in her Underwater Basket Weaving class. She takes her role as flower girl very seriously, and she made it especially for the occasion.

Janice is the second most important person in his life, after Carlos, and Cecil hopes to whatever gods or spirits or unspecified divine beings shape the path of the universe that she will never grow tired of her braids, of her uncle running a brush through her hair, twisting it into beautiful shapes. Carlos compliments Cecil's hairstyle as they hold each other close for their first dance, and Cecil smiles into his husband's shoulder.

"Janice did it," he says.

Carlos kisses the top of his head. 

"Of course she did."


End file.
